This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The following abbreviations that may be found in the specification and/or the drawing figures are defined as follows:                3GPP third Generation Partnership Project        CPC Computer Program Code        eNB or eNode B evolved Node B (e.g., an LTE base station)        ID identification        KPI Key Performance Indicator        LTE Long Term Evolution        NSN Nokia Siemens Networks        O&M Operations and Maintenance        NRM Network Resource Model        SA5 A Standardization Working Group in Telecom Management        SON Self Optimizing Network        TS technical standard        UE User Equipment        X2 an interface used to communicate between eNBs        
The self-organizing network, or SON, is a wireless network that attempts to organize itself based on certain criteria. More specifically, the paper by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), entitled “Self-Organizing Network (SON): Introducing the Nokia Siemens Networks SON Suite—an efficient, future-proof platform for SON”, provides the following definition: “In this context, the term self-organizing network is generally taken to mean a cellular network in which the tasks of configuring, operating, and optimizing are largely automated.” The NSN paper goes on to state the following: “This breed of network aims to reduce operational expenses while enabling a gratifying user experience even under adverse conditions such as congested traffic.”
SON algorithms require a certain amount of time and trial and error (and maybe some degraded user experience during this time) before the algorithms converge after system changes. A number of different explicit indicators of eNB “system changes” can already be shared, e.g., through O&M/SA5 signaling.
However, there are and probably always will be a number of new and different aspects of current eNB configurations which cannot be captured through this existing signaling. For instance, certain configuration parameters of an eNB may be considered by a vendor to be proprietary. SON algorithms do not have access to these proprietary parameters and therefore perform configuration without knowledge of the effects of such parameters.